this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
62 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

1864 readers
159 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This is a nice post, but it has such an annoying sentence right in the intro:

At the time I saw the press coverage, I didn’t bother to click on the actual preprint and read the work. The results seemed unsurprising: when researchers were given access to AI tools, they became more productive. That sounds reasonable and expected.

What? What about it sounds reasonable? What about it sounds expected given all we know about AI??

I see this all the time. Why do otherwise skeptical voices always have the need to put in a weakening statement like this. "For sure, there are some legitimate uses of AI" or "Of course, I'm not claiming AI is useless" like why are you not claiming that. You probably should be claiming that. All of this garbage is useless until proven otherwise! "AI does not increase productivity" is the null hypothesis! It's the only correct skeptical position! Why do you seem to need to extend benefit of the doubt here, like seriously, I cannot explain this in any way.

top 16 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If you're after streams-crossing - this guy is a rationalist who does Manifold Markets

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well that fully answers the questions I had I guess

Why is everyone a milkshake duck

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

I mean this post seems largely correct and reasonable, but ehh be a little cautious

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Reads "Does AI make researchers more productive? What? Why would it?"

Thinks "When does statistically likely text without relation to truth make researchers more productive? Well, when they are faking research"

Gets to article. Article is about faking research about AI making researchers more productive.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 19 hours ago

Self-licking ice cream cone As A Service

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

God what's the odds that he also used a wisdom woodchipper to produce the text of that pdf lol

[–] [email protected] -3 points 11 hours ago

gpt-like AI is useful for what I'm doing (and others in similar boats), because I'm doing lore and world building for a fictional setting that almost nobody but me knows about. If the lying machine lies, that's ok, because I can just choose to use it or not.

Actual research on real world subjects should not use gpt-like AI. They're trying to discover about an unknown whatever, and the lying machine is of course going to fill in gaps with plausible sounding bullshit.

Anyone who is both 1) paying attention, and 2) isn't pushing an agenda, already knows this.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

“For sure, there are some legitimate uses of AI” or “Of course, I’m not claiming AI is useless” like why are you not claiming that.

Yes, thank you!! I'm frustrated by that as well. Another one I have seen way too often is "Of course, AI is not like cryptocurrency, because it has some real benefits [blah blah blah]"... uhm... no?

As for the "study", due to Brandolini's law this will continue to be a problem. I wonder whether research about "AI productivity gains" will eventually become like studies about the efficacy of pseudo-medicine, i.e. the proponents will just make baseless claims that an effect were present, and that science is just not advanced enough yet to detect or explain it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Much like blockchain the FOMO is so strong people are afraid to say it’s bad even when there is nonstop evidence rolling in. With all the data they still are too cowardly to say anything critical.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago

I feel the C-SUITE executives are pushing the AI way harder than they ever pushed crypto though, since they never understood the tech beyond a speculative asset, but the idea of replacing work-hours by AI-automation has been sold HARD to them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Because we are witnessing the birth of a religion, it just happens to be a lame, very cult-like one that is friends with everyone in power.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Too late im already simulating everybody in this thread in my mind.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

This was bizarre to me, as very few companies do massive amounts of materials research and which also is split fairly evenly across the spectrum of materials, in disparate domains such as biomaterials and metal alloys. I did some “deep research” to confirm this hypothesis (thank you ChatGPT and Gemini)

"I know it's not actually research, but I did it anyway."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

I love this paper